...When All is Said and Dunn

The Little League season is about half over and the picture for the season is pretty clear. Not clear as to who the final winners and losers are going to be, but clear about those people you will be dealing with for the remainder of the season. The parents to avoid are known and the managers’ game plans and personal agendas are exposed. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the undependable.

Little League seems to bring with it so much emotion and passion, not only from the players, but also from the parents and everyone involved. It seems as though every Little League game is like game 5 of the World Series. Sometimes it gets quite heated and tempers have a tendency to flair.

Not that this is an entirely bad thing. At least these parents are showing an interest in what their kids are doing. At least they’re attending the games, although there may be some people on their team that wish they wouldn’t. But the facts are, they are there and are cheering on their team. You just have to deal with it.

If they go over the line that’s what the umpires are for. Much to the dismay of the overzealous factions of the crowd the “blues” as they are called are a necessary part of the game. In addition to keeping order in the game, they are responsible for keeping order in the stands. And, if you are lucky enough, you may even get one like the famous Morris of West Covina to ump your game. When you have Morris, you get the extra-added bonus of being entertained as well. You see Morris is part umpire, part stand up comedian.

But back to the crowds or the lack thereof. The other night, as I was watching a game, I mentioned to the three long time fixtures at Temple City National Little League, Dermot Cullen, Dana Baskin, and Jon Bernasconi, that it looked like a pretty good-sized crowd. All three rolled their eyes and shook their heads at my naivete and began to regale me in days gone by.

They told me of standing room only nights where neighbors and people who were just driving by would stop and come watch the game. It wouldn’t make any difference that they didn’t know any of the players involved personally, they just loved to watch baseball. It gave everyone involved a sense of community, something that sadly is vanishing more and more on a daily basis.

A big part of the reason that this is happening is due to the lack of commitment on the part of the parents. Part of being in Little League is being a volunteer to a certain level. I’m not saying you have to show the same dedication that someone like Jeff Bearman does. I am in awe at the amount of time that this man dedicates to the league, without even having a child playing. In the three years that I have been there I can’t remember a time that I was there and he wasn’t.

That type of volunteerism is rare and we can all thank the Jeffs of the world for their selfless work. So when I hear things like what I heard the other night at the board of directors’ meeting, I begin to get really ticked off. Apparently some parents think they are above fulfilling the agreement they made when they signed their kids up to play this season.

You see when you sign up your child for Little League, besides paying the normal fee, you are made aware of the fact that you, the parent, are required to do shifts in the snack bar. The snack bar is a fundamental part of the equation of keeping the league running with the profits that it makes.

If you are unable to do your snackbar shift yourself, there are a couple of options available. (1) you can pay $20 a shift to a sub to cover your shift, or (2) you can have a high school student who is looking to fulfill their community service hours to take your shift for you. Either way, you must plan for your shift and adopt one of these options prior to your shift. Not the day of or an hour before or when the shift is supposed to start. And most importantly, you can’t just not show up! That’s pretty simple right? You would think that anyone of average intelligence would not have a problem grasping this little concept right? Wrong!

Some parents, even though they sign the contract with the league before any monies are exchanged, still don’t get it. They seem to think they are above doing their shifts. The person responsible for scheduling, Kathy Campo, has had the worst time in trying to get some of these deadbeats to do their shifts or pay for the subs they had to call in at the last minute. She has had some of these people not return her calls, hang up on her, or be verbally abusive.

My gut feeling is that these people are part of the invisible parent contingency that leaves the stands half empty at games. These must be the same parents that view Little League as nothing more than an extended day care.

How do you think your kids feel when they look up in the stands and see all the other parents and they don’t see you? If you have no conscience about supporting your kids while they play by not showing up, then I guess we are way out of line thinking you would stick to your commitment to do your snack bar shift.

At this meeting there were many good ideas about what to do with these people. To be quite honest, they all sounded acceptable to me. We could punish the parent by not allowing their kid to play in the next game or make the manager responsible by suspending him when one of his parents doesn’t show up. But the solution that I was the most partial to was the public humiliation version. We could start out by putting a small list of all the names of “no shows” in the standings case. If that doesn’t work, we could enlarge it to poster size, make multiple copies and post it around the ballpark. If that doesn’t get results, we could start printing their names every week on the sports page of the newspaper. That one is my personal favorite. I actually entertained the idea of listing their names at the end of this article, but I thought that was a bit premature.

So if you want to scar your child’s psyche by not supporting them while they are playing ball that is your decision as a parent, but if you want to scar the League by not meeting your commitment, I am going to take it very personal and my typing finger is starting to get a bit itchy.

The Shrub Speaks: “I’ve coined new words, like, misunderstanding and Hispanically.” Radio-Television Correspondents Association Dinner – Washington D.C. 3/29/01